


Gravity Fell

by orphan_account



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Other, Sexual Content, Ten Years Later, reluctant partnership
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-15 11:45:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4605489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I can fix this," Dipper grits out.</p><p>"Sure, kid. It's just the apocalypse. A real fixer-upper."</p><p>Ten years later, the anomalies have overrun Gravity Falls, the Mystery Twins are split up and Dipper's finding himself turning to the last almost-person he'd rather not come eye-to-eye with again. An awkward partnership ensues, and Dipper comes to realise that putting his last vestiges of trust into a manipulating mind demon might become his last misstep in a decade-long row of poor choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. whose woods these are i think i know

**Author's Note:**

> no human!bill here. tinyfloating!bill and objecthead!bill all the way. smut will probably happen

A hiss of  phospor igniting lights up the small assembly of trinkets: Eight candles placed around a picture of a smiling Mabel Pines hugging her pet pig Waddles. The candles are carefully lit, a hand shielding the flickering flame from the wind sneaking through the surrounding thicket.

_"Triangulum, entangulum..."_

Flashing bright red, the flames climb several inches in height like eight big warning signs. This is expected, as the dream demon, the focus of the summon, was last the target of an immensely powerful banishment ritual. The chants change accordingly, reciting the dispelling enchantments in order to open the small pocket dimension the demon has resided in for close to a decade.

It's a longer, much more difficult spell to cast, and as the speaker continues, he carefully watches the candles and pours out a thick circle of salt.

The flames turn bright blue: the summoning can continue.

_"Vene foris videntis omnium!"_

The forest goes dark, the subtle rustling of leaves ceases and the wind freezes over.

A low rumble seems to work its way up from under the ground, starting deep down and slowly ripping open a glinting tear in the inky darkness. The ripple, unstable and fluctuating seems to strain to pull itself open from the inside, as if several hands are attempting to keep it closed.

 _"C'mon..."_ the spellcaster mutters under his breath, hands fisting around the tattered journal. "I know you want out of there, _you--"_

As if sensing the resentment in those words, the dimensional tear flickers and rips open with a strangely soft noise akin to cloth ripping and thick glass splintering. A thin slit of pure white shines through and dark pupil flitters from corner to corner, unblinking and bleary until it settles its eerie glare on the summoner. Its stare turns malevolent, the atmosphere turning icy the instant it focuses on the young man in front of the candles.

With a deafening roar, the flames explode into tiny fiery tornados, the wax rapidly melts into puddles as the curling flames spiral up and upwards, singing the hair and matted edge of a once-blue cap. The young man stands back a couple feet, quickly snuffing out the embers on his person.

The eye, now reddened in absolute rage, seems to bulge and protude through the dimensional tear, the sky shaking with the impotent fury barely held back by the mostly-defunct banishment spell.

_"Dipper Pines."_

The lone twin narrows his eyes at the searing light and the fuming stare. The air stands still, hot and bloated with esoteric power.Hand on the journal, he recites the last chants of the summoning, each syllable allowing the tear to shudder and splinter apart. The demon, still red hot and raging forcefully shoves through the realms, the world shudders at the intrusion once and then closes up instantly with a harsh glint of white light, leaving the triangle vibrating with rancour above the photograph.

A staring match ensues.

It's not much of a contest, as Dipper eventually has to blink away, the heavy, one-eyed stare proving much too difficult despite his courage.

The demon closes its eye, seemingly taking in a deep breath in a faux-gesture of regaining composure. The little cane appears, swinging into existence around a thin, black arm as Bill's straight-faced stare bores a hole into Dipper's forehead.

"Been _a while,_ huh?" the demon chatters, composure already worn thin as his voice cracks.

Dipper clutches the journal, silently. He wasn't prepared. That said, he _was,_ but... one can never really prepare for Bill Cipher. Not really.

Cipher, sensing the summoning circle is laced with restrictive charms, opts for a quick glance around the small, washed-out clearing before laying his weighty stare back upon the twin's head, as though wanting to split it in two with just a thought. He might've tried for that, if it wasn't for the protective charms.

"Place has seen better times, kid," the demon casually observes, and the forced nonchalance is almost convincing this time around.

Dipper bites his lip, weighing his words.

"Geez kid, couldn't shut you up last time, now you're having me run the show on my own? Not that _I mind--"_

"You're going to help me find Mabel," Dipper bites out.

Cipher narrows his eye, red colour slowly seeping back into his triangular shape.

 _"Lose_ somethin'?"

"You're going to help me find Mabel or I'll shove you back into the prison you came from."

"I'll pass," Cipher dismisses, examining his fingers.

"You won't," Dipper bites out.

"Oh-hoh?" Bill cuts back, leaning on his cane, looking genuinely amused now. "What's this? Moxy? _Gusto?_ In _my_ flaccid little Pinetree? Boy, the years sure have roughened you up, huh? _I like it!"_

Dipper waves his hand irritably, not willing to indulge the demon's verbal runarounds. He's got to stay focused, and not let the triangular sociopath run circles around him. "You haven't changed much, but I guess a dimension void of time and space doesn't leave much room for character growth, into which is where you'll go back if you don't agree to my conditions."

Cipher barks out a bitter laugh.

 _"Conditions?_ What is this _'sign on the dotted line, no reading the fine print'_ business you're trying to pull? That's _my_ sthick!"

"You can come with me or go back, your choice."

"Not much of a deal," Cipher chuckles harshly, although his merriment barely veils the boiling, bubbling resentment underneath. "I'm not here to hold your hand while you and your much funnier counterpart play hide-and-seek. Not after you _so kindly_ left me on an extended vacation, far away from all the hustle and bustle of the multiverse."

"I told you, this isn't meant to be your kind of deal," Dipper stands his ground. "I just need your help finding Mabel."

 _"Just_ that?" Bill questions, cockily. "The place looks like it could need a bit of Spring-cleaning. I told you Gravity Falls would fall apart without my gentle guiding hands to keep you all in line."

 _"I can fix this,"_ Dipper grits out.

Bill slowly circles in place, taking a measured look at the overgrowth of dark, gnarly trees, that have long since strangled out the life of the city, the almost unnatural twilight that never seems to leave, and the deadening forest floor ripe with discarded remnants of civilization: burned out cars and torn parking lot signs peek out from thick, enourmous roots behind the small summoning circle; gravel roads are worn down into barely visible patches of pebbles, and wooden fences have all but been swallowed by ivy and moss. It's rare to see asphalt slip out from under the stacks of decaying pine needles and graying garbage. Dipper knows the view of the sky is mostly strangled out by the trees, that navigation is impossible in a darkness that's as breathing and alive as the masses of dangerous creatures it now hides.

The demon turns back to Dipper, point made.

"Sure, kid. It's just the apocalypse. A _real_ fixer-upper."

"You want Gravity Falls back? You'll help me."

Bill whistles and rolls his eye in disinterest.

"Listen kid, while the newfound self-confidence and lack of sweating was cute for all of two seconds, this is getting boring. Just stuff me back in the Void and get lost finding the fun twin on your own."

Dipper swallows, jaw set in determination.

"I could do that," he says, "I _could._ But then you'd miss your chance, you know. And you don't want that. You want revenge. And you want out. You might not like it, but I'm your only chance for a long time of you getting out before someone else stumbles over your summoning ritual and somehow dispels the banishment. But by then I'd be long dead and you'd never get to have a shot at getting back at us. You'd be bored for an eternity, _bored_ to insanity and _denied_ the chance to rip out my teeth for a laugh and turn my screaming skull into another conversation piece."

It feels a bit macabre to talk about his impending doom, and as much as he wants to sell the prospect to the demon, Dipper really doesn't have any plans of becoming some sort of morbidly taxidermied demon keepsake just to give Bill his jolly vengeance.

Bill, pretending to mull over the words, turns his back on Dipper, twirling his cane and turning a darker speculative yellow. Dipper can't help but feel that the demon has long since made up its mind and that all this posture and posing is some sort of... measurement of him.

Bill whirls around, flashing bright yellow.

"Gotta say kid, you seem like a lot more _fun_ these days! Might just decide to stick around. Watch how it all turns out. Stretch the ol' legs a bit." He dances on the spot, grabbing the cane in both hands. "I'd love to see what else you've done with the place," he says smartly, eye flickering over the deadly silent bushes, devoid of the fluttering of bird wings, the chattering of squirrels, or even the braying of the manotaurs. In its time-frozen state, there's not a lick of life apparent.

Dipper nods tightly.

"You're going to link yourself to me," he says. "It's possible for you to make a deal with me to become my familiar--" at this, the demon rolls its eye dramatically, evidently  discontent with that particular turn of phrase. "--and thereby limit your powers so you don't go messing stuff up."

"Like there's anything left to mess with," Bill snorts.

Scowling, Dipper continues: "You're not to enter my dreams or anybody else's, and don't you dare go around making deals."

 _"Geeeez,_ fine, fine, no seeing other people, looking for cheap hook-ups, I get it; still as high-maintenance as ever, aren't you?"

Dipper flips the journal open, and kneels down to place a few pieces of smooth wood with runes crudely carved into them.

"So, I'm an a leash and strictly monogamous, any other ways to make this the least pleasant experience for everyone involved?" Bill says, appearing much calmer than his interjections would have Dipper think.

"I'm putting down the binding spell," Dipper replies evenly, unable to shake off the creeping feeling that, even with him all but neutering Bill, he's still somehow playing into the triangular bastard's spindly hands. " _After_ we find Mabel, I _might_ re-negotiate our deal, if need be."Hopefully he'll be writing up a new banishing spell and booting Bill back into the universe's asshole as soon as Mabel's been found, and they can start working on finding their way back to Soos and the other survivors' camps, together.

He stands up, dusting off his worn jeans and finally returns Bill's irreverent stare.

"Okay," Dipper says, with more confidence that he ought to have, and sticks out his hand to meet Bill's handshake, licked with blue seething fire, very much with the feeling of a deep-sea diver coming face-to-face with a shark smelling blood. "Let's make a deal."


	2. his house is in the village though

Gravity Falls has been in permanent twilight for close to a year now. It lights up a couple hours, probably around midday, and during the night, the darkness swallows up everything completely. Even with a floodlight pointing right at the woods, one can only see a couple feet into the undergrowth. It's unnatural. It's like... anti-light. As if something's out there gobbling up photons.

It's on Dipper's _long_ laundry list of mysteries to solve. 

It's also the reason Dipper's going to have to hurry to the nearest shelter before nightfall or he's going to fall off a cliff and break his legs before Cipher gets a chance to do it himself.

He's chosen the summoning ritual based around the map he'd made of the dimensional rifts that would appear and reappear, and chosen a place where the fabric of time and space would be the thinnest, and most likely to let him reach out to the entrapped demon. He'd had to make sure to also decide on spot that was particularly secluded, to make absolutely sure there'd be no interference from either enemies or allies. He's pretty sure neither Soos nor Wendy considers towing around an insanely powerful mind demon with a grudge a good plan of attack, but Dipper is quite literally at his wit's end.

Dipper's spent many a night sleepless with guilt and mind churning out a million different outcomes. Mabel (when she was around) was always quick to remind him that obsessing over the past would be a one-way-ticket to the coo-coo nest, that the only thing that made sense was to pick himself up and make sure his next big fuck-up would be less disastrous than the last. It was encouraging, in a sense. Sobering.

Except, she's not here now, and Dipper's brain is free to think itself into unsound ennui.

If he hadn't convinced Mabel to shut down the portal ten years ago...

If they had been there the second time Grunkle Stan attempted it...

"Talk about sending _mixed signals;_ first you can't _wait_ to pull me outta there and now you've been ignoring me ever since!"

Dipper's face falls. This isn't how he'd like to be brought out of his melancholic musings.

"I don't have anything to say to you, Bill," Dipper bites back, treading carefully past the metallic carcass of a minivan. They're on the highway, the least broken up road around. The asphalt is cracked with weeds and thick, gnarly roots, and the white striped paint has all but flaked off. "Having you hover around is bad enough, I don't want you messing with me or trying to play any of your mind games."

The yellow triangle floats next to Dipper, at around shoulder-height. At least he provides a constant source of light.

"Do you have any idea what I'm like when I'm bored?"

"Annoying? More so than usual? I'm not your goddamn babysitter."

"C'mon kid, loosen up. By the looks of things, you're going to have to warm up to me one way or another," Cipher says smarmily. "Like you said, you _need_ me."

Something about the way the demon phrases it sends a weird creeping sensation up Dipper's nape.

"I'll let you know when and how you can help me," he says. "I'm not about to let you talk me into anything."

"Hah! Of _cooourse_ not, kiddo. I'm sure you're _so_ much smarter to my wily ways now."

Refusing the bait, Dipper keeps trudging down the deserted road, past hollowed out car wrecks and climbing over fallen trunks.

In a couple of miles, he'll probably (hopefully) pass Manly Dan's old lumber truck, which has become something of a landmark to Dipper. It was tumbled over by a particularly angry stampede of elk men rushing away from a rampaging giant.

In the equation of fantasy creatures versus the truck, the metal had given out under the torrent of hooves and hollering half-men. Luckily, Manly Dan and his family had been able to escape the scene and subsequently derail the giant. Just another day in Gravity Falls.

Dipper, when he was still a teen, used to browse sites of old, abandoned buildings and parks for potential ghost hunt outings. 'Nature reclaiming' was the common term. He'd bookmarked hundreds of places of hotels, hospitals, apartments, amusement parks and even entire islands overgrown and drowned out by nature. Hotel rooms with beds and chairs covered by green, glossy moss, railroad tracks with the wood turned oily yellow by miniscule fungi infestations and apartments with the plumbing piping out hundreds of crawling ivy instead of hot water and gas.

It was odd to see Gravity Falls, the city he'd spent a couple summers, and afterwards, several years in, become the splitting image of the urban exploration websites he'd used to traverse. Last time he saw the water tower it had turned a bright orange rusted colour and were supporting several thorned, curling branches of an as-of-yet unidentified carnivorous plant. He remembers trying to categorise it with Mabel, and losing several lunch sandwiches in the attempt to pacify it.

The loss of his twin pangs sharply through him, and brings Dipper back out of his reverie.

He needs her to ping-pong off of, needs her positivity to combat his weariness and her spontaneity to compliment his endless planning.

Dipper sighs, easily lost to the maelstrom of loss and guilt. Mabel's out there... somewhere. But with Gravity Falls in the state it's in, he's in no shape to search for her. He needs... someone with good eyes. Very, very good eyes. And nobody's better at keeping their eyes peeled than a mind demon whose entire existence revolves around nightmares and illicit knowledge.

He's honestly surprised that they were able to keep Bill squared away in that doomed little pocket dimension as long as they were. It was all down to countless false tries and hours poured over the journals, Dipper's haphazard notes and endless amounts of tomes of elder learning and lots of things he definitely wasn't supposed to know of. He'd had to unearth adn decipher a whole new language, plus several dead ones just to piece together a way to have the Universe Portal open again.

When he'd read through a couple pages scrounged from an unfinished translation of the Necronomicon in one of the Author's secret hideouts, Dipper learned of the White Void. It was perfect, he'd thought.

As he read more, he'd come to think of what he'd read on some of the less savoury websites he'd frequented on his hunt for cryptozoology. About White Torture, a punishment that translated to the uttermost sensory deprivation. Locked in a white room, clothed in white and fed white rice, it would strip a human mind of anything to settle on, anything to distinguish the surroundings from the colours and patterns conjured by a deprived and bored mind.

A human would go mad with nothing to look at, nothing to react to, nothing to discern.

The White Void, however, was an entire pocket dimension stripped of noise, of minds, of colour and time. The stories in the pages he'd managed to salvage where that the dimension belonged to beings so far evolved that they'd cease to exist on every plane admissible to humans and, yes, even demons. The White Void was, well, devoid. No space, no time, no nothing. Only your own mind, and the endless whiteness.

It seemed a perfect place to park a mischievous and psychopathic mind demon while they'd attempt to undo the damage done to their own dimension.

They just hadn't calculated for the fact that maybe Bill Cipher actually kept things more in line than he let on. That he wasn't the only one with his eye out for Gravity Falls. And in his absence, other forces had dared to make their move.

A power vacuum that was quickly filled by demons less enamoured with humans than the triangular menace were.

All things considered, Bill had raged and raved significantly less than Dipper had thought he would. Although it was surely only the calm before the storm.

As paranoia creeps in, he readjusts the straps of the worn backpack over his chest and turns his head to chase the bright glow of the floating triangle.

Bill looks, for all intents, blank. Dipper's sure the demon is keeping a straight face while his dirty mind is working a billion miles a minute.

"I suppose you're not going to thank me for letting you out of the White Void?" Dipper says offhandedly to the demon.

Bill glances at the young man.

"Hah! Good one," he snorts. "I remember you being funny once in a while."

"Right," Dipper says. "I should've figured."

"Still a dumb," the demon drawls. "If you were any smarter than your Great Uncle, you'd let me roam free and jump from mind to mind until your sister's within my caressing eyesight."

_"Wow,_ don't--don't say it like that. Gross," Dipper grimaces. "And, no, _no way._ I can't allow you to start messing with everyone's heads."

"If you're not going to have me use my powers, why summon me at all, kid?" the triangle replies, seemingly bored. "Oh wait--it's because you're desperate but not willing to own up to your own faults and shortcomings and instead seek to impotently exert power over an otherworldly being infinitely more powerful and capable than yourself and throw yourself up for an Ironic Fate Worse Than Death in the process. Yawn, how _human."_

Dipper's mouth opens and closes a couple times.

"I'm not impotent," he grinds out. "I mean-- _powerless."_

Bill's eye rolls.

"Kid, you are toying with things vastly out of your competence. You're a speckle of a neuron in the grand scheme of things, and even if you managed to rub together those few gross squishies inside your brain and produce some spark of thought that isn't hindered by hormones and adrenaline and whatever weird bodily fluids render you humans incapable of reasonable thinking, you'd still universes outta your league. Your best bet is to let good ol' Bill here fix your grief and put you and your sister back where you belong."

The demon swings around Dipper's head, and ends the tirade by bopping the twenty something on his nose with the end of the classy walking cane.

Dipper swats it away, irritated.

"Look--you're right--you're probably _more_ right than I care to know. But. I'm still here. Gravity Falls is still here. Mostly. And that's what counts. And I have a plan."

Bill shrugs dramatically.

"Great pep talk, kid. A+ for effort."

"I don't care what you think. All that matters is that we do one thing at a time, and don't let things get out of hand."

"Oh," Bill replies airily. "Then you might want to know that we've been stalked by several wendigos the last mile or so.

The aggravated, deafening howls of the cannibalistic creatures by far drown out Dipper's curses as he breaks into a sprint, Bill floating after him with a nasty, nasally cackle.

\---

_Mabel's in the sky. She can see the stars. There are..._ so _many._

_She turns her head and watches the powdery dust-like particles of what must be thousands of stars impossibly far away. It's fantastic. It's mesmerizing._

_She never wants to leave._

\---

Running away from horrid, nightmarish affronts to God never seems to get old in Gravity Falls. Or, maybe it's just an irreversible part of Dipper's life by this point.

Sprinting down the lonely, debris riddled highway, the brunette is counting his options while barely keeping himself from falling over and cracking his skull open on the tarmac, treacherous tree roots and metal pieces from the old safety rail making for a dangerous obstacle course.

He's convinced that Bill isn't lying. For one, the raspy breaths and snarls behind him points towards something very hungry being hot on his trail.

Mentally flipping through his internal menagerie of monsters, Dipper tries to recollect what he's collected about wendigos: pale, white ghouls of despair that feast upon human meat and will turn against each other given so much as a chance. It's just his bad luck that they'd rather chase him than duke it out for territory.

He's pretty sure their bulging, yellow eyes can see in the dark, so dashing into the foresty undergrowth is only going to lead to a very short chase. Running infinitely down the highway certainly isn't an option either; they're going to catch up to him and he's making a target for himself for other grisly apparitions of the night.

The twilight is beginning to ebb into the black pitch of the night; and when it does, he's a hundred percent done for. He's going to trip on the unsteady terrain and either be caught by the wendigos while Bill cackles hysterically in murderous glee, or attract something infinitely worse, like a Grue; the premise still ends with Bill's schadenfreude and Dipper's untimely, very ugly, demise.

"Hey kid, _kid,"_ Bill whispers, a tiny floating speck holding onto his shoulder. "If you were ever in doubt as when to throw away your 'master plan' and gimme free reins--now's the time, by the way. That's a _free_ hint, from me to you."

_"Not now,"_ Dipper wheeze-hisses and jumps over a discarded oil drum and onto a part of the highway unearthed by large, thorny vines. He barely misses having his pants ripped open, but he can't afford to lose momentum or run in a circle around the intrusive plantlife.

There's sounds of smacking lips and specks of drool just behind him, his neck growing icy cold at the hungry grunting of the grave-ripping ghouls hot on his trail.

"It's either now, or never," Bill replies, now floating easily next to Dipper, keeping the pace without a huff. Damn legless piece of-- "Tick-tock, what's it gonna be? A helping hand or helping those guys to a nice evening meal?"

"I _can't--"_ Dipper gasps.

"I guess that means Mabel's lost wherever you forgot her, huh?" Bill says. "Oh well--"

" _Dammit--!_ Just--! I _need_ more--"

"More... _time?"_

Bill snaps his fingers.

Everything blinks out of existence.

Dipper's heart is caught in his throat, his body feels like it's stuck in molasses and his arms and legs are suddenly ice cold, as if instantly frozen in place by a temporal glacier.

He blinks twice and feel a pull upwards.

He's hanging by the end of Bill's cane, looking down at himself and coming to a horrifying realisation that the wendigos are less than a couple feet behind him; in fact, one of them is frozen in the middle of reaching out a clawed, decaying hand to swipe at his back pack. The angle and proximity is going to be enough to startle and throw him off balance.

He's going to fall off into the ditch and watch as the ghouls descend upon him, mouths open and ready to tear at his clothes and skin.

Dipper stares, dumbfounded.

"What... did you do?" he whispers.

Bill lifts him up by his cane, like an angler with his recent catch, and pats Dipper's flustered cheek with a tiny, black hand.

"Nothing special, kiddo, just slowed down your perception of time to a millionth of what your feeble brain is normally capable of  understanding. "Time sure flies when you're a gullible little human. I can't _buh_ -lieve how much stuff you guys miss out on!"

Dipper's eyes flies from creature to creature, to himself, and back to Bill.

"Is this... Is this how time passes for you?" he asks, dumbfounded and aghast and inexplicably entranced by the possibilities.

Bill guffaws at him, striking up an obnoxious laughter as he slides a tear out of his eye.

" _Hoooo boy,_ Pine Tree, I forgot how simple-mindedly adorable your questions can be. Hah! Oh boy--no, no, this is wayyyy too linear, kid. Way too _limited_. This is just a chance for us to catch up on the reality of your situation, Dips-and-Chips."

The triangle points to the chase in action--slowed down to a thousandth of a second, maybe, but still very much in action.

"Don't look too good, does it?" Bill says, sounding way too chipper. "You probably knew something like this was gonna happen, though. Gravity Falls ain't so _nice_ anymore, is it?"

"You want to make a deal," Dipper states nervously, swallowing a dry lump.

"I want to... _loosen_ my reins a smidgen," the demon says, studying his nails nonchalantly. "Nothin' _big_. Just, y'know, enough to remind you of who's _really_ in charge of the situation."

It's like a cold bucket if ice water down Dipper's spine.

Bill's _toying_ with him.

He's got Dipper at death's door and could twist his arm to do exactly as he wanted but--but he's, for some unfathomable reason, going to let him off the hook--?!

_No--_ Dipper shakes his head.

He's going to ask for something small but infinitely important, he must know that Dipper still has a chance, albeit miniscule, of fighting off the wendigos. Otherwise he wouldn't stop to try to make a deal, just watch him eaten alive and point and laugh.

He's taking advantage of his panic, of the intensity of the moment.

Bill is far from free, and he knows it, and he's not above from pulling Dipper aside to show off his powers and make the situation look infinitely worse than it really is--although it doesn't take much to make it look bleak as all hell.

Still--he doesn't like his odds himself. He'd like not to use his few trump cards unless it's to protect Mabel or--or--

"I'll let you use your powers--" Dipper says, jaw set in determination. "To _protect_ me--and you can--you can harvest nightmares again, I guess. But _you stay out of my head!"_

"How _gracious_ of you, Pine tree," Cipher snarls and twirls his fingers like a demented magician. "I'm sure you won't be around to regret this."

_"Wh--!"_

In an instant, he's back to sprinting forwards, back to aching lungs and harrowed breath and snarls and growls behind him. His leg connects oddly with the pavement and sends an unpleasant jolt of pain up his shin, and Dipper almost tumbles face first over the tarmac, something that's sure to rip his face wide upon on the uneven, rough stone.

There's a screech--not of hungry intimidation, but pure fear.

Dipper comes to a skidding halt, his boots scrape over the rough gravel and in one arching move, he reaches for the broken baseball bat inside his half-ripped-open bag.

The wendigos are livid, pacing around and chasing the empty air, screaming and clawing at enemies blind to Dipper, but seemingly real to the ghouls. They're howling in pain and seem to stagger when 'hit'.

Breathing shallowly, Dipper takes a running start and brusquely connects the bat's splintered end to the temple of the nearest wendigo with an echoing, dull thud. The force of the resistance ripples through the bat and shakes its way up his arms, and Dipper, without thinking and acting on pure 'fight' instinct lifts the bat again only to bring it down square on the creature's sinewy, leathery neck.

There's a snap of whiplash and Dipper's barely stepped over the twitching body before the bat meets with the shoulder of another  yowling, distracted ghoul.

The wendigo's eyes are burning bright blue, a clear sign of Bill's interference keeping them unawares of Dipper's beatdown, even as he's delivering it with a ferocity he always tries to ignore after the fact.

Blood and black bile splatter the highway and stick to Dipper's tall hiking boots, a couple sharp canines stick in the baseball bat as some sort of fucked-up victor's spoils.

Huffing, Dipper starts off, half running and half stumbling down the road towards the split road that leads to the Shack. He's running on empty adrenaline at this point, more than aware that the ghouls aren't going to stay down for long, that there's a long series of magic wotsits and ethereal thingamabob he'd have to recite in order to put the souls trapped in those vultures to rest.

"Geez kid, don't you trust my handiwork," Bill's voice rings out inside his head. "No need to beat them into paste. Never knew you were one for wet work! I _like_ it. Nothin' like beating your enemies into bloody pulps to bring ol' pals together. I really feel like we're _connecting_ , ya dig?"

"Not _now,"_ Dipper hiccups, feet carrying him swiftly down the paths out of pure physical memory.

"I like the bat-approach too--very _Stan Pines."_

_"Bill,"_ Dipper hisses, "I swear to _God--"_

"Yeah. You do that," the demon whispers, ear-splitting grin apparent not so much in visage as in the tone. "Run on home, Pine Tree. I'll see you next time you're out of luck. Which, judging by the evening so far, isn't going to be long."

With that, it's like a shadow that had been blurring the edge of his vision disappears, and Bill's completely, blessedly quiet the entire one-hour run-hobble-walk-run home to the Shack.

Coughing and counting his blessing, Dipper pulls himself into the doorway and unlatches the deadbolts and switch locks one by one. His lungs are pumping like crazy, and it feels like no amount of air will ever satiate the blood roaring through his veins, deafening his ears to the shrieks and hoots of the nightly horrors. He all but falls inside the kitchen and barely has the conscious thought to lock down behind himself and place a door under the handle.

He simply slides off the bag and collapses in the chair, too tired and too upset with the mess of demonic meddling and mind-numbing terror that has become his life to do much aside from slipping into a restless sleep.


End file.
